Indiana
How A FedEx Shipping Hub Has Become A Cash Cow For Indiana
Indiana police use K-9s to search packages moving through a FedEx hub, using civil forfeiture to … [+]
Henry and Minh Cheng are jewelry wholesalers who have done business across the U.S. for over three decades, but one state they have never been to is Indiana. That hasn’t stopped Indiana from taking more than $42,000 from the couple without charging them with a crime. How did the state end up with their money? By intercepting packages at a busy FedEx shipping hub at the Indianapolis airport.
Civil forfeiture is often derided as “policing for profit,” but what is happening in Indiana hardly qualifies as policing. The hub in Indianapolis is the company’s second busiest in the U.S. Some 99,000 packages are processed per hour.
For at least several years, police have pulled packages from conveyor belts, run K-9s over them, gotten warrants to open the parcels, and seized money when they find it. Prosecutors for Marion County then file civil forfeiture cases to keep the money. Property owners find themselves fighting for their cash in a court that could be hundreds or thousands of miles away from home.
Indiana prosecutors file these cases without alleging any specific violation of Indiana law. Instead, they say the cash is proceeds of “a violation of a criminal statute.” To get their money back, property owners have to affirmatively defend against allegations that their property is linked to a crime. It is American justice flipped on its head.
For Henry and Minh, shipping products is standard but shipping cash is out of the ordinary. They work with Asian retail jewelers across the country and had shipped gold chains to a regular customer in Virginia. The retailer was slow to submit payment, and a few months after the sale the customer said she could pay promptly in cash. So the bill would be paid right away, Henry and Minh agreed to accept the cash payment and sent her a FedEx shipping label.
The money never got to the Chengs in California. What they got instead was a civil forfeiture notice. At this stage, many people simply give up, as the cost to pay an attorney can quickly equal the amount of money lost. Some who do get a lawyer choose to cut a deal with prosecutors to get only some of their money back.
But the Chengs were upset. They had done nothing wrong and they needed that money for their business. They found attorneys with the Institute for Justice and are fighting back in court.
However, the Chengs are not just defending their money. Their lawsuit also seeks to end Indiana’s FedEx hub scheme.
There is a lot wrong with civil forfeiture, but what Indiana is doing is unusually predatory. First, packages are deemed suspicious by police based on innocuous features. For instance, police have said a package was suspicious because it had tape on the seams. But FedEx actually tells customers to tape seams securely.
Second, getting a drug dog to alert to a package of cash is easy. At least one study showed that 90% of U.S. bills have traces of cocaine. If packages contain only money, no contraband, a dog alert doesn’t reasonably indicate the money is criminal proceeds. Every cash register in America is full of bills that would cause a dog to alert.
Third, Indiana prosecutors don’t allege what specific Indiana law is linked to the money. For the most part, the money seized is in Indiana only by happenstance. The origin and destination of the package are in other states. For Indiana to take someone’s property, it has to say what Indiana law was violated and thus justifies forfeiture.
Indiana police and prosecutors simply aren’t interested in uncovering crimes or arresting criminals. But they like the easy money. So far, since 2022 more than $1 million has been raked in with another $1.5 million working its way through the courts.
Now the Chengs’ lawsuit will put Indiana police and prosecutors in the hot seat for how they are violating Indiana law and the federal Constitution. No one should have to effectively prove their innocence to keep the money they’ve worked hard to earn.
A handful of Indiana Republican state senators saw this abuse of power unfolding and said, ‘Not on our watch.’ And now they’ve been voted out by those who placed loyalty to Trump ahead of democracy.
Indiana state senate candidates endorsed by Trump prevail in primaries
In Indiana’s GOP primary, President Donald Trump demonstrated continued clout. Of seven GOP senators he opposed, at least 5 lost their nominations.
Donald Trump, even more so than other presidents, needs guardrails to keep his worst impulses in check.
But on May 5, Republican primary voters in Indiana further weakened the political and legislative guardrails around the president when they threw out of office at least five GOP state senators because they put the Constitution ahead of Trump’s partisan demands.
It wasn’t just those relatively obscure legislators in Indiana who lost. We all did.
That’s because the message delivered to GOP members of Congress, as well as to Republican lawmakers in other states, is that defying even Trump’s most outrageous demands is still the path to defeat within their own party.
The vote also helps accelerate both political parties’ obscene rush to gerrymander congressional maps beyond any reasonable facsimile of fairness.
Indiana primary sent message to Republicans who stood up to Trump
In 2025, the Indiana Senate, thoroughly dominated by conservative Republicans, said no to Trump’s partisan order to redraw the state’s congressional maps to favor GOP candidates even more heavily than the current districts already do. The senators’ thoughtful independence not only drew Trump’s wrath but also triggered his vow to punish the legislators in the next election cycle.
Now, five senators whom Trump targeted have lost their reelection bids, and one other race is too close to call. Only one Republican incumbent targeted by Trump managed to withstand the president’s onslaught.
Message sent and received.
Our constitutional system is, of course, designed to provide checks and balances, but the system works only if we follow it.
Trump helped kickstart the rush to prematurely redraw congressional boundaries ahead of November’s midterms elections in a desperate bid to salvage Republicans’ tenuous control of the U.S. House.
Congressional redistricting normally takes place every 10 years, following the national census, as prescribed in the Constitution. Trump, as is his wont, ignored historical standards to advance his own interests.
Redistricting push in Tennessee, South Carolina and others won’t help voters
So far, GOP lawmakers in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas have redrawn districts in ways that could enable Republican candidates to flip 13 Democratic-held seats in November.
Other Republican-dominated states, such as South Carolina and Tennessee, may push forward their own reconfigured maps.
In response, Democrats in California and Virginia adopted heavily gerrymandered maps that favor their party. Democrats could pick up nine seats in those two states, as well as one in Utah, from court-ordered redistricting.
None of this partisan manipulation helps ordinary Americans, and it certainly doesn’t strengthen the public’s trust in our democracy.
A handful of Republican state senators in Indiana saw this abuse of power unfolding and said, “Not on our watch.” They should have been rewarded for their political courage. Instead, they were bullied for months by our nation’s commander in chief and the mercurial leader of their own political party.
And now they’ve been turned out of office by voters who placed loyalty to Trump over allegiance to democratic values.
I scoffed at liberals who claimed before and after the 2024 election that Trump’s win would destroy our democracy. Their self-serving hysteria was over the top then and remains so now, even in light of the president’s heavy-handed redistricting push.
American democracy will be just fine, long after Trump has shuffled out of the Oval Office for the last time. But just as fences make good neighbors, guardrails make better presidents.
It’s our nation’s loss that the guardrails built by brave Republican leaders in Indiana didn’t hold.
Tim Swarens is a former deputy opinion editor of USA TODAY and opinion editor of The Indianapolis Star.
ROCHESTER, Ind. (WISH) — An Indiana Silver Alert was issued Wednesday afternoon for a 16-year-old boy who has been missing for hours.
Kipton Harris was last seen about 1 p.m. Wednesday in Rochester, the alert said. The Fulton County city of 6,100 residents located about a 110-minute drive north of downtown Indianapolis.
Authorities believe Kipton may be in or traveling to the downtown Indianapolis area.
Kipton was believed to be in extreme danger and may require medical assistance. He was described as 5 feet 5 inches tall and 145 pounds, with red hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing a light-colored shirt, camouflage pants, and black and white shoes.
The public was urged to contact the Rochester Police Department at 574-223-2819 or call 911 with any information regarding his whereabouts.
These employers were recognized by the annual Top Workplaces employee survey conducted by Energage, working in partnership with IndyStar.
Top large companies
- Progressive Insurance
- Eight Eleven Family of Companies
- Shepherd Insurance
- LEL Home Services
- Merchants Bank / Merchants Capital
- Tendercare Home Health Services
- Rohrman Automotive Group
- Team Rehabilitation
- Wabash Center, Inc.
- Brighton Hospice
- Mainscape
- The Indianapolis Public Library
- Greenix
- Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers
- Indiana Members Credit Union
- Celigo
- Round Room LLC
- Freedom Mortgage
- Thompson Thrift
- Kirby Risk
- Ren
- Morgan Properties
- American Specialty Health, Incorporated
- Towne Properties
- New Palestine Community Schools
- Planes Companies
- Panda Restaurant Group
- Fifth Third Bank
- Flaherty & Collins Properties
- Indiana Department of Revenue
- Republic Airways
- RCI
- Cox Enterprises
- PERFICIENT
- Grand Appliance
- PT Solutions
- Centerstone
- Peterman Brothers
- Groundworks
- Damar Services
- Kloeckner Metals
- CBIZ
- Graybar
- Resultant
Top midsize companies
- Paradigm Health
- SEP
- New Hope of Indiana
- Scopelitis Law Firm (Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary)
- Bath Experts, LLC
- Opportunities for Positive Growth
- Hensley Legal Group, PC
- TBC Hotels
- The BAM Companies
- BSA
- Northview Church
- Northwestern Mutual
- Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine
- Dauby O’Connor & Zaleski, LLC
- Quality Plumbing & Heating
- Meyer Najem
- The Garrett Companies
- Commonwealth Engineers, Inc.
- Family Express
- GVC Mortgage
- Hays + Sons
- InPwr Inc.
- Kinetic Advantage
- Schahet Hotels, Inc.
- LER TechForce
- Envelop Group
- Unified Group Services, Inc.
- Knowledge Services
- Key Benefit Administrators
- Reynolds Farm Equipment, LLC
- ARBOR HOMES
- Total Quality Logistics – TQL
- North Mechanical Contracting & Service
- Indiana Donor Network
- Royal United Mortgage
- Perfection Group
- Eye Surgeons of Indiana
- ALOM
Top small companies
- Bailey & Wood Financial Group
- Indesign, LLC
- Children’s Therapy Connection
- Vaco Indianapolis
- The Peterson Company
- Express Employment Professionals
- ProKids
- Pension Fund of the Christian Church
- Mission Mechanical
- Robert Dietrick Co., Inc.
- Loren Wood Builders
- PulteGroup-IN
- BGBC, a Springline company
- NCW
- Visit Indy
- WorldTrips
- Aerocore Technologies LLC
- Vikan North America
- ready-2-xecute
- DirectEmployers
- USI Consultants
- SJCA, Inc.
- Indy Auto Man
- Kirkpatrick Management Company
- Indiana Biosciences Research Institute
- Engaging Solutions, LLC
- Exos
- Indiana Health Information Exchange
- Patterson-Horth
- Office360
- Netfor
- Haggard & Stocking Assoicates
- National Trade Supply
- Fairchild Communication Systems
- Adelta Logis, Inc.
- EMC Precision
Special Awards
APPRECIATION
Criteria: I feel genuinely appreciated at this company.
Winner: Scopelitis Law Firm (Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary)
BENEFITS PACKAGE
Criteria: I am very satisfied with my benefits package.
Winner: PulteGroup-IN
CLUED IN SENIOR MANAGEMENT
Criteria: Senior managers understand what is really happening at this company.
Winner: Indesign, LLC
COMMUNICATION
Criteria: I feel well-informed about important decisions at this company.
Winner: New Hope of Indiana
DIRECTION
Criteria: I believe this company is going in the right direction.
Winner: Paradigm Health
DOERS
Criteria: At this company, we do things efficiently and well.
Winner: Children’s Therapy Connection
LEADERSHIP
Criteria: I have confidence in the leadership team of this company.
Winner: Quinn Shepherd, Shepherd Insurance
LEADERSHIP
Criteria: I have confidence in the leadership team of this company.
Winner: Mike Wood, Bailey & Wood Financial Group
LEADERSHIP
Criteria: I have confidence in the leadership team of this company.
Winner: Andrea Schwartz, Opportunities for Positive Growth
MANAGERS
Criteria: My manager helps me learn and grow. My manager cares about my concerns.
Winner: REN
MEANINGFULNESS
Criteria: My job makes me feel like I am part of something meaningful.
Winner: LEL Home Services
NEW IDEAS
Criteria: New ideas are encouraged at this company.
Winner: Progressive Insurance
VALUES
Criteria: This company operates by strong values.
Winner: BSA
WELL-BEING
Criteria: This company does a great job of prioritizing employee well-being.
Winner: The Peterson Company
WORK/LIFE FLEXIBILITY
Criteria: I have the flexibility I need to balance my work and personal life.
Winner: Merchants Bank / Merchants Capital
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